Audrey Cuttler's life hasn't been the same since that song, "Audrey, Wait!" hit the airwaves. All she wants to do is go to concerts, hang out with her friends, and maybe score a date with the cute boy who works with her at the Scooper Dooper.

But now, her ex-boyfriend's song about their breakup is at the top of the charts and she's suddenly famous! The paparazzi won't leave her alone, the tabloids are trying to make her into some kind of rock goddess, and the Internet is documenting her every move!

Will Audrey ever be able to have a normal life again? Get ready to find out, because it's time for Audrey to tell her side of the story.

With Audrey, Wait!, I’ve now read all of Robin Benway’s books. It’s been ups and downs for me for the most part. She definitely has major contemporary talent, but some of them were not my favorites tbh. Audrey, Wait! was Benway’s first book, and there’s a lot to recommend it but she’s also come a long way since then.

Audrey’s not really what I might have expected. In general, Benway’s heroines have been very likable, but Audrey’s a bit harder to take. She’s a teenager, I guess, with all that can come with that. She makes some seriously questionable choices and she’s the kind of selfish where she has no idea she’s selfish. It’s a character arc thing, but not one that I think gets totally nailed in the story. Audrey goes from zero to sixty emotionally, from not remotely self-aware to aware and changed in no time. While the scene itself was satisfying, the reconciliations were overly simplified.

After breaking up with her boyfriend, Evan, he writes a song about her dumping him that becomes a huge success. This thrusts Audrey into the spotlight. The concept is fairly solid, though obviously not the most realistic in the world, because I don’t think Audrey would get THAT famous because of the song tbh. However, as a fictional idea, I’m down.

Her fame begins to cause problems with her relationships. Her best friend, Victoria, keeps urging her to milk it, to take all the free shit being offered to her, to be on a reality show, to get endorsements, despite Audrey’s not wanting the limelight. I think that’s a good conflict to be set up, but I’m disappointed that, in the end, Audrey takes all the blame. Apparently she’s the selfish one for not wanting her friend to have fun with her pain, when in fact I think Victoria’s recommendations were fucked up and terrible. I really wish that had been addressed, but it wasn’t.

The romance is adorable, though, again, it would have been better if, after the fight towards the end, they had a real reconciliation. Instead, Audrey apologizes and everything’s fine. Still, I think this is a nice high school love sort of relationship. They’re not going to last past graduation, but they’ll have a good experience while it does last. Also, cute nerdy gawky ginger = adorbs.

While not up to the standard of Emmy & Oliver, my personal Benway favorite, Audrey, Wait! was a good read, and I’m glad I took the time to venture into her backlist.

Penelope Featherington has secretly adored her best friend's brother for . . . well, it feels like forever. After half a lifetime of watching Colin Bridgerton from afar, she thinks she knows everything about him, until she stumbles across his deepest secret . . . and fears she doesn't know him at all.

Colin Bridgerton is tired of being thought nothing but an empty-headed charmer, tired of everyone's preoccupation with the notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, who can't seem to publish an edition without mentioning him in the first paragraph.

But when Colin returns to London from a trip aboard, he discovers nothing in his life is quite the same, especially Penelope Featherington, the girl haunting his dreams!

And when he discovers that Penelope has secrets of her own, this elusive bachelor must decide . . . is she his biggest threat, or his promise of a happy ending?

Romancing Mister Bridgerton is my favorite Bridgerton book yet. With each novel in the series, I feel like Quinn is going further and further from the typical romance novel tropes and doing what she wants to do. If that’s the case, I sure like when she has freedom.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Colin’s book since the second epilogue of The Duke and I spoiled who he was going to be paired with. I was so curious to see how she would pull off Penelope and Colin as a ship. Normally, I wouldn’t love this ship, because Penelope has been pining for Colin for YEARS, and that’s something I generally cannot abide. Then again, I think the problematic part of that trope is when the other party has secretly cared for them too but decided to let them suffer in pain for a while first. Colin, though, didn’t have romantic feelings for Penelope until this book.

Quinn does a really excellent job with Colin’s changing feelings. He’s been traveling a lot for years, so he hasn’t seen much of Penelope of late. He’s also been a bit more mindful of her, ever since the events of an earlier novel in the series where he proclaimed, accidentally in front of her, that he would never marry her. Add to that the fact that Penelope is finally opening up and letting her personality shine through, with the urging of the lovely Lady Danbury, shipper extraordinaire. All of those factors combine to make Colin take a new look at Penelope. I love that he falls in love with her personality and then comes to find her looks so charming, rather than the other way around. It’s not that Penelope got super hot; it’s that he sees her in a new way. Also so so so grateful there wasn’t any retconning that he’d loved her before then.

The melodrama, for a romance novel, is minimal. Colin and Penelope have their fair share of fights, but they get resolved without any long estrangements. Both Colin and Penelope have some personal stuff to work through, which they do together. They’re so supportive of one another in everything, and this is a relationship that could really work.